Portugal: Day 1,2 and 3, to Coimbra and Duoro

Portugal: Day 1, 2 & 3, from Coimbra to the Duoro river and back.

Those familiar with the ‘Lonely Planet’ must know that the book divides the country into regions. I believe these regions are purely based on their geography and not so much the politics.  The first 3 days of my journey in Portugal drove me through the regions of Beira, and the Duoro river valley. Over the extent of these days it had dawned upon me, that a country as small as Portugal can be at times as diverse as India.

I reached Coimbra, the capital of the Beiras and what is aptly called the Oxford of Portugal. On my first night which happened to be a Friday night, I looked out for traces of students having a fun time on the road but found none. What I found was a restaurant, oh ya food again. Although I have no habit of noting down the events as they happen, I feel now I really should’ve noted the name of the restaurant where the menu is typed everyday on a typewriter, which is itself as old as its chef. With my little knowledge Spanish, and comparing the words with Portuguese, I was able to set my order right. It had an English menu but I simply chose to read from the typewritten one. It felt fresh to read the food items under a date. Soon I realized that the food was as fresh as the menu. I think it was fish on day one for me in Coimbra. Actually it was that more or less all through my journey.

Anyways so there I was, my eyes on the plate and the only sound to be heard of  was that of the people talking softly. Yes that is one thing about the Portuguese that I noticed immediately. They are softer than the Spanish. The words are much more rounded than their neighbors and so are their bodies. So, as I sat at my table all alone thinking about how to go about tomorrow, the long table next to me, which had the ‘reserved’ sign, started to fill. A few men in their late 50’s came, and drinks came with them. Then more men and more drinks, till I realized that this was some kind of a re union. There was one man whom I picked to ask at the end, ‘is this some kind of a birthday party or college reunion?’ and the man simply smiled and said ‘Its Christmas’

Well not only those men were soft with their party mood, although this was much before they got a little tipsy, I guess even their wives must be easy on them. This was my first rendezvous with the people, the men from Portugal and it looked like other than the grand old chef who insisted I have his best desert, there were a few in the group of men who didn’t mind me staying on till the end.

I had to get on the road early the next day and so I chose to leave. 

In the original plan about this region, I had 2 nights in Coimbra and to drive to Porto, the second biggest city in Portugal from where I would take the ‘tourist’ cruise with my people to Peso do regua, on the other side of the Duoro river. The cruises don’t operate in winter, so I thought to myself why don’t I simply drive to Peso do Regua rather than Porto.

The reason I chose to drive in this trip was that this is exactly how my people would travel. Public transport was fine and cheap but that would largely limit the places I travelled to. As I drove to the other side of the river, I learnt that the book spoke about a train station, further away from Peso and was a place not to be missed. So just to see the train station I went the 25 kms. Those 25 kms, my dear people were the best I had driven in the whole of Portugal(actually there were a lot more).

The river looked like a lake. The image of the surrounding mountains so clear that a vineyard dried up in the winter months could drink water from it.

The town of Pinhao .. population of 110. Imagine one wedding in this town and the whole town is empty, other than in mid-summer, when the tourists would account for multiples of at least 5.

Sometimes the journey is better than the destination is what I thought during those 25 kms. But here the destination Pinhao was as good as the journey itself. When I travelled with my dad in India and we would go to Hotels to negotiate the rates, I used to tell him, lets not, it looks expensive. He would then say, “lets see, they need us”. Well that’s what I thought when I went to see the rooms at the Vintage hotel in Pinhao. A hotel made out of an old warehouse for wine. It looked solid and when they said that they have special rates for the first week of may, that’s exactly when my people would come, I was happy. Not because of the rates but because this was the first time I had acted like a businessman on my trip and not just a traveler.

In the travel business, I have to deal with local travel agents who in turn deal with the hotels. But what if the local agents aren’t good enough, well yes then why will I work with them shall be your question. Well, good at arranging stuff, but not good at actually suggesting it. My job in this trip I had then learned was not only to get familiarized with the place I had decided to take my people to, but to question it first, and to see if there is anything that is better than that. After all I will come back for more, but my people will see Portugal only once.

And I want them to be as happy as I was with Portugal.

A stay in Pinhao, overlooking the river in the month of may, when the big hoards of tourists are still away will play a big role in letting Portugal talk for itself. That evening, when I drove back to Coimbra and ate at the same restaurant, I realized that I had not much of an appetite. I was already contended with Pinhao and finding it out for my tour.

On my way back from the restaurant that night, in a narrow lane in Coimbra I saw the students, then I saw more in subsequent lanes. It was as if the town had its arteries in the lanes. It was where it was alive. 

I had read about the traditional music of Portugal. It is known as Fado. The book spoke about Coimbra as a place where it was born and Lisbon was simply where it took off from. I usually don’t like sitting at places where the tourists sit and listen to music, or watch a dance specially set for them. But that night after the first 20 minutes of Fado I realized, that the singers who were in their late sixties were as enthusiastic about their singing that evening, as they would have been when they started. Who was I to think of this place as typical and the experience touristy.  When I got off from my chair, it was half past mid night!

Its true that Pinhao won over Coimbra in Natural beauty and the sheer appeal. But somewhere I felt that Coimbra was a place to feel and not to see. Much like the first night when all I did was saw the town and it felt empty. The second night I felt the pulse of the town, coming from its lanes from its students talking about their country or maybe their love life, from the music that played in that touristy café and later from the air that felt warm in +7 degrees. Or maybe it was just me who felt warm .. in Portugal!

Portugal - How it all began ?!

Spain Morocco and Portugal. Thats how my tour was planned in 2011. The itineary was purely on the basis of what people wanted from me and not what I knew about these countries. I was happy that the tour did not take off. Never once did I feel that i was right about the tour. 

In the mid 2012, I realized I had to separate Morocco out of the other two so that I could concentrate on it more. Later I realized after some ‘lonely planetting’ that Portugal begged for more. And so the whole idea of spending close to 10 days in a country, driving through its roads immerged. I thought I would do my research before coming to the country but till the time my flight was 20 mins from touch down in Lisbon, I was lets say too much engrossed in my Scandinavian tour.  So much so that on my way to the B&B from the airport, I even doubted my coming to Portugal. Well that was the last time ever there was any ‘doubt’ about the country.

The Plan

Drive through the cities and towns picked by me for the tour itinerary

The Objective

To not end up with my people as a complete stranger to the road

The carrier

A small sized ‘economy’ car, that’s what the rent a car website said

The budget

Stay cheap eat modest and spend only on fuel

It all seemed to be well in view until my first unplanned stop in a small town called Santarem on the way to Coimbra in the central region of Portugal. The attendant at the counter of my guest house in Lisbon had told me to visit Fatima on the way and to eat there, but Santarem a few Kms before had a ‘lonely planet’ top choice restaurant. Well close to the end of my 3^rd course and somewhere before the desert, I realized .. modest is only an adjective assigned to the way the restaurant was. The food was something I had no control on. I was coming from Norway and Portugal gave me the entries, first course, second course, desert , coffee and drinks for the price of a single plate in Norway. I was hungry and the chef too keen to show my lonely planet around to his locals. ‘estou es muito bem’ translated to ‘this is very good’. The book he meant, the food I did. I felt like staying till evening and then to stay back till dinner. But I realized there was more to come and this was just the start.

Portugal had made its mark. A little bit of Goa I thought at first when in the morning I had stared right up to the Atlantic ocean from the terrace of my guest house. Eating in that small eatery I realized that if not anything, I am going to have a blast with the food.

Its true ,the culture, language, people and the sights all came in big .. but they came in later! FOOD knocked me down first and then it was very easy for the rest of them to come all over and to make me say at the end of it all.

Can I really also take out Spain and just do a tour of Portugal ??!!

I am going to write about the next few days in Portugal in parts. Something that I have tried to do with Siberia but only managed a little. Much like they do in the book we all adore and respect so much. The ‘Lonely Planet’.

Up North in Scandinavian Winter !

The Scandinavian winter is behind me. I love every part of travelling in the Scandinavian Arctic’s in the winter as much as I do in the summer. But somehow the winter is more larger than life. The snow and the white magic it creates, makes you forget everything. At times even that you are in Scandinavia. However when you touch more than just the white flakes you know its Norway, Sweden or Finland. The people up north in these countries are called Sami. They share a common culture with the Russian cousins.  However they are a few decades ahead of them in technology. But the Russian sami’s have their own reason of sticking to their traditions. They believe that they can zoom around in a snow mobile but what about the fuel? How will they afford that? So they continue riding the reindeer. Unlike in Norway where the Sami herdsman travels ahead of his reindeer family in a snow mobile, sets his tent and comes back for them in the months of winter migration.

The Sami trade in reindeers. Its their currency. So when a child is born in the family, he gets a reindeer and then on each birthday he receives one more. When he has 20, he reserves the option to trade them for money or to become an active herdsman. And If he does choose to trade them, then even in Norway he could afford a nice apartment and a good life. Such is the value of reindeers.

For us however all that matters is to take a ride on the sledge and to feel the warm fur over its skin. Then, to sit in a Sami tent made of reindeer skin and to listen to the tales of the Sami, about his family and their way of life, as the reindeer stew cooks slowly over the central fire and his kids run wild in the snow outside in – 20 deg.

My winter tour to Scandinavia is titled the ‘Northern Lights, Scandinavia’. However even if the northern lights do show their full color it feels more contended, when people say, “there is much more to the winter here, than just the lights”.  Its true the culture in a place, the people the food can even make the nature take a back seat at times. However when both of them come together, the combined effect is a winning combination.

I am flying now to Lisbon and to + 17 deg. I knew even when I was freezing in – 20 and absolutely hating it, that I would miss the negative double figures on the mercury scale. I am already doing that as I enter the Portuguese airspace.

Winter or summer in Scandinavia. The northern lights or the mid night sun. The story of the fisherman in summer or that of the Sami in winter.  Everything about Scandinavia is simply Scandinavian!

White Riga - Latvia

I first came here, not with the intention of coming but just to avoid flying from Helsinki to the Finnish north. Not because I dislike the capital of Finland but just because I spend a lot of time in summer there and winter called for something different.

Riga is different, it’s a mix of St Petersburg, Prague and any west European city. The feel is medieval, the touch is modern, the people are friendly and even though it doesn’t always matter, they all speak English.

In the first year itself, the ‘Riga plan’ was appreciated by my people who had almost all been to Helsinki. For them, Riga offered a different take on the winter and white Christmas. It just proved to be the ideal stay, before flying off to the North of Finland where Santa has his abode, Rovaniemi.

Latvia is one of the three Baltic countries that were formed when the USSR went out of work. Estonia and Lithuania are the other two. The LATS, local currency here is stronger than the EU, perhaps the only country in the EU to have such a status. Economics has never been my strong point, so when I came to know that the financial crisis has not affected this country so much, I thought that the stronger Lats has something to do with this. However my guide made it very clear,  “we know how much to spend”. “ We earn one third of what they give in Greece and look where it is today”

Its true, even in the priciest of streets here, the people display modesty. The women too, can you believe it! Even the Burberry store on the corner looked simple. 

The food has distinct traces of Russia, and why not when half of its population still speaks Russian. Vodka, however is not a strong seller. The Balsam is, which happens to be a concussion of herbs and fine tuned to the fermentation process. I however stick to beer when I am here.

I always stay for a night and somehow don’t feel incomplete when I leave.  I just feel happy to have come here again. Riga doesn’t shout, it doesn’t need to do that. It just keeps quiet and lets you look at it, till you feel it under your skin.

As I said bye to my guide today, she just said, “See you next winter”.

I don’t know how I will feel if I ever come here in summer. There is an image this city holds, a feeling. For me Riga will always be cold with a warm inside.

East from North to South in TURKEY

‘Sutlaj’ is a desert people eat in Turkey. But like any country in the world, the best food item is highly localized and then its versions are available elsewhere in the country. The best Sutlaj is from the north east of the country from the mountains of Kackar. Here the air is clean and the milk from which it is made, rich. I love this desert and sometimes even eat it as a meal replacement when in the region.  The region of the North East of Turkey, which is the star attraction of my tour to Turkey and an addition we made just this year. I always smile with content when people who after experiencing the North East express their happiness in coming to this remote area of Turkey.

However I have never been so proud of it as I was today, when my local Turkish guide proudly said to a restaurant owner in Istanbul who asked her to taste his sutlaj “oh .. Do you know where I’ve been two days back, Rize and Hamsikoy!” The owner knew what she meant, and exclaimed that she had been to the Mecca of sutlaJ. He then asked her how the hell did she land up there. All she did was to point at me. The owner then looked at me and smiled. I smiled back .. I smiled with more content than I ever had before.

To follow is one thing and to discover is an entire different madness. And when that discovery goes well with whom it is intended for, it is sheer content. The Black sea, North East coast of Turkey and travelling through it made me fall in love with the country all over again. I now crave for more, to go further to the east and then the south following the borders of Georgia, Armenia and Iran. Places that the people here in Istanbul are inquisitive about and sometimes even scared to go to, because of the Kurdish problem there. A region where if you ask a local where you can find a hotel to stay, he would happily say, “why do you need a hotel? ,my house is just 50 mtrs from here”.

A land of snow capped mountains and still lakes, where to reach a top of a mountain there is no cable car like in the west, and so the tourists are less and less is beautiful. Naturally this is all before I have even been there. When I go there and ultimately start a tour, it will be what I would finally get my kick from.

On this trip to Turkey, I feel I’ve grown. Well, not in terms of the number of people in my group, coz I am still struggling to convince the people back home to spend 10 days in turkey, but in terms of knowing the country. And this I know has not just happened. The language and learning to speak it, making a conversation which extends just a ‘good day’ and ‘how are you’ has been the key.  In 2010 from having one frustrating hour of silent drinking with my driver who couldn’t speak a word of English and me a word of Turkish to now where still the silence exists but only when sipping the drink, I feel, I have come a long way in Turkey and Turkish.

In April this year I remember telling my agent, “I hope I don’t need to come to Turkey again”. Well what I actually meant, was that I needed more time to concentrate on my other tours.  But here I am again and it seems that what I said to my agent did not make any sense and probably never will.

Turkey just calls and who am I not to ans

The guest HOUSE .. hotel Debate !

How do you decide where to stay when you travel. To stay in a star rated hotel is how the general requests from my tourists come. ‘I want a 4 star’ is the common expression. 4 stars, where you can press ‘0’ for operator and other combination of digits for Restaurant, Laundry, Reception etc. According to the service standard of the Hotel, the concerned people respond. And they better respond or your expression is, this ??  a 4 star ???!!

But what if, at the middle of the night when you are hungry, you need to go and make your own sandwich, or your bed needs to be made and you have to do it yourself ? Well, think about it ! We all want luxury or at least convenience when we travel and these things don’t really fit in, do they ?

Yes they do .. they fit perfectly when you fit in. When you feel uncomfortable in the tower blocks cooled by artificial air. When the sandwich that comes to your room is good, but the feeling is not good enough as to sit and eat in a kitchen with the scent, still lingering.

There is a huge demand of hotel rooms and the more they build them the more the city will need I am sure. Then there are hostels, which cater to backpackers and/or travelers on a tight budget.

Somewhere between these two is a guest house or a B & B (Bed and Breakfast).  Many of us end our travel endeavors without staying in one and believe me it’s a shame.

                                                              THE ENTRY !

The hotels are not personal, the hostels have a friendly atmosphere but the co travelers offer more than the owners. In a guesthouse, which is ideally not bigger than 8 – 10 rooms, the word ‘personal’ takes a new meaning all together. It has the friendliness of a hostel, but in which the owners contribute more. The convenience of a hotel, but not the artificial professional service that comes with it.  An omelet for breakfast is made in front of you and there is no line like that at a ticket window to claim it. The water in the room, when over, needs to be refilled by yourself from the kitchen. The bed is made but only once during the stay. The garbage has to be self disposed, and more than seldom a pet would play at your feet as you read a book in the verandah.

                                                              DINING FOR 15 !

In the night when dinner is served the owner and generally his wife or a friend will entertain you with their stories. The first glass of wine is taken into account but when the conversation becomes interesting, the wine flows ! The next morning during check out you realize that as much as you, the owners had the pleasure of drinking with you and so it was on the ‘guesthouse’

The ‘hope to see you again’ happens but it feels more like ‘even if we don’t see you again, we are happy you were here’

There are hotels, which have a mall, swimming pool, casino and a gym to keep their guests entertained. In a B&B you would be entertained.. oh yes you sure would be .. but with conversations .. With the owners, the co travelers, the pets, the birds, and yes when you are alone gazing at the open sea or a hill in front of you .. With yourself!

Note : The blog is inspired by the stay in the Naya Guesthouse in Buyukada, Istanbul ! To know more about them visit .. www.nayaistanbul.com

Croatian Blues ..

I was 12 when the Union of Soviet Socialist Republic disintegrated and as far as I can remember back then on the limited news channels in India there was not much about it.  Three years later cable television came in India in a big way and suddenly the world and the events happening in it were louder.  In 1993 the loudest were the explosions heard in then, Yugoslavia. Words like Bosnia, Kosovo; Siberia, Croatia etc were spoken a lot on the news.

Some 10 years later ‘Lagaan’ an Indian film was nominated for the Oscar’s. Back home in India we all were vouching for it to win. But ‘No mans land’ a film made by a Bosnian director won the coveted best foreign language film award in 2002. 

Eight years later in 2010, I first came to Slovenia, and realized it had a past and was first to branch out of Ex Yugoslavia in a 10 day war with not much casualties.. The other country to do so was Croatia but for them however it was not that easy. It took 5 years and the lives of some twenty five thousand Croats before the war ended, and the borders of Croatia were recognized by the world.  My interest in this region I realized had grown enough to explore it.

The war is over and the tourism is booming. Places like Dubrovnik in Croatia attract close to 2 million visitors every year. But in my search of the real Croatia and the way it was before the war, I decided to move around this little Peninsula of Istria. The clear blue waters, lazy little towns with cafes on the sea front and a typical old town feel is what I had imagined every town of this Peninsula to be more or less. But, tourism, which supports the economy, also destroys the peace of a place. On my first evening I was very disappointed with Rabac which claimed to be smaller of the lot, but it left me wondering ‘if this is small, then !!’ It took me the next morning and a visit to a tiny family estate, which specializes in making a typical ham from this area to feel close to the real Croatia.

Fazana from the sea !

It was in these villages, where the impact of the war was only economic in nature. So the charm continues to live. The people smile but not like the front office manager in a 5 star hotel who when she smiles and says ‘its so nice to see you, have a nice day’ actually means ‘hey listen, fuck off I hate this job’. When I enter a restaurant and the menu doesn’t come to the table, not because the place is busy, but is at its own pace I know the food has more chances of being good. Just like the town itself, which lives at a similar pace.

This is where you should eat !

That’s what is going wrong in tourism. Places like Dubrovnik or any tourist town in Europe, which receives crazy amounts of tourists per day, have café’s, souvenir shops etc where the pace is like Mumbai, while the town has a pace 10 times slower. The result if you think deep and u should be lucky for it to occur to you, that you are only physically present in the place. Mentally it feels like the fast moving Tokyo.

I went today to a bookshop in Zagreb and asked for some movies by Croatian and Serbian directors. All of them had war scenes on their cover. I asked the salesman ‘all war movies?’. He said ‘offcourse’ .. it was more a statement about the war than the movies.  1995 is seventeen years old but no 17-year-old works in a book store. When you live through a war you don’t forget it.

Somehow it makes me think the war did change the people here for the good. I don’t know how and I can’t explain it. Maybe they were this friendly from the beginning.. Who knows!!

All I know is right now Croatia has just opened its window to me. The door I will knock in the time to come